Salt

Each year for the past six years, photographer Murray Fredericks has trekked over the expansive salt flats of the Lake Eyre Basin in southern Australia. He travels by mountain bike with a small trailer in tow, packed with his tent and photo equipment, through a landscape where one cannot always distinguish where land ends and the sky begins. Over the course of a half hour, we gradually come closer to Fredericks, both cinematically and in person, and ultimately bear witness to his outpourings about why he goes on these lonely, annual expeditions. He was also alone throughout the filming of Salt, which is a portrait as much about the photographer as the place where he loses himself each year. Fredericks filmed all the ground shots himself, and these run the gamut from carefully framed "photograph shots" to raw, handheld footage filmed from his tent. Especially impressive are the time-lapse shots, in which the nocturnal sky whizzes by the horizon. It is seldom that we get such clear cinematic proof that the earth is floating through the cosmos. The majestic quality of this natural beauty gets ruptured by the gentle atmosphere of the film, in which Fredericks might be cut off from everything and everybody, but he can still receive a call on his cell phone. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)